Thursday, May 18, 2017

A book review of The Power by Naomi Alderman by an author who shall remain nameless.

One of my favorite hobbies is asking just what would happen if humanity encountered an ‘Outside Context Problem,’ something that would change our society in unpredictable ways. The return of magic, first contact with an alien race ... it doesn't even have to be something completely out of this world. How many early writers - Rand, Asimov, Doc Smith - failed to anticipate the birth of the microchip, the internet, smartphones ... things that have already reshaped parts of our society? What next will change the world?

The Power asks just such a question. And, in many ways, the answers are disturbing.

The basic premise of The Power is that, all over the world, teenage girls are developing the ability to generate and channel bursts of electricity. (Not unlike electric eels.) The ‘power’ can push someone away ... or kill them. Furthermore, younger women can awaken the power in older ones. The handful of early ‘awakenings’ rapidly becomes a river, then a flood. The Power makes its way around the world before human society quite realizes what is going on, chaos following in its wake.

The story is told through four viewpoint characters - Margot, an American politician; Roxy, the daughter of a British gangster; Allie/Eve, an American runaway; Tunde, a student who becomes a roving reporter. All four of them have their lives uprooted and reshaped by the Power - Margot starts climbing the latter to the very top, Roxy takes over her father’s ‘business,’ Allie/Eve founds a whole new religion and Tunde documents everything, travelling the world to film the effects the Power.

Beyond this, The Power is framed as a historical novel written in the far future (perhaps not unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, although it has been years since I read it.) I actually forgot this as I started reading the main story, only to be reminded of it at the end. The author deserves full credit for this as the epilogue explains some of the odder parts of the story, the bits that didn’t quite make sense. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

The Power presents itself as an ‘event’ story - it tries to touch on the lives of all four characters and tell a global story. And it does, to a very large extent, a very good job - three of the main characters remain localized, while the fourth walks the world and provides a global perspective.

Indeed, Alderman deserves credit for not forgetting that there is a world outside the US and UK (she’s British). The Power causes disturbances in America - Britain doesn't seem to be so badly affected, at least at first - but it causes immediate upheaval in places like Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and India. Alderman has no truck with the belief that women are uniquely oppressed in the West. Saudi women, feeling their strength for the first time, rise up against the religious police and a social structure bent on keeping women firmly under control. In India, women make shows of force against rape culture; in the Balkans, women trafficked and sold into slavery fight back, first against the traffickers themselves and then against their entire society.

I’ve heard the book described as a SJW rant. It is not. Alderman clearly does not believe that a world run by women would be a kinder, gentler place. Given power - the Power - women can be just as bad as men, if not worse. Throughout the second half of the book, as the world starts to slip further and further off its axis, it becomes clear that the Power is something akin to a drug. Women can get drunk with power, just like men. And the results can be just as devastating.

Alderman does very well in presenting a world where some societies have fragmented and others have an uneasy sense that they’re on thin ice, trying to find ways to tame or remove the Power before it’s too late. I wish, in many ways, that she’d actually written a longer book, because the details are fascinating. On the other hand, it would be easy to get lost in detail if there was more of it.

On the other hand, there is something subtly wrong about the main characters. It actually took me some time to put my finger on the true fridge brilliance. The Power doesn’t just feature a change in human biology, it predicts a change in human nature itself. The three female characters become more and more like men as they go along - Margot starts out as a likeable character, then devolves into a parody of a powerful and untouchable man. Indeed, the roles have reversed themselves completely. Roxy, midway through the book, recounts being molested as a child and how her gangster father taught the bastard a lesson; later on, it is Roxy who avenges her brother after he is raped. By the end of the book, the reversal is striking - women act like bad parodies of men and vice versa.

This also leads to another deconstruction - deliberate or otherwise - of the ‘all girls want bad boys’ trope. Tunde’s early reaction to encountering the Power has a lot in common with female scenes from bad bodice-rippers (or Twilight, for that matter); he is poised between arousal and fear. And while the idea of having a super-strong vampire stalker or a millionaire with a BDSM kink for a boyfriend may sound cool, it doesn't take long for the real unpleasant implications to sink in. Alderman may well be pointing out the true dangers of the trope - it blinds Tunde to the danger of losing his rights and freedom until it is almost too late.

Indeed, there is an air of inevitability about the ending. I found that annoying at first, then I was reminded that the whole thing is presented as a historical novel, written by a man in a matriarchal society. The outcome, as far as he is concerned, is preordained. Indeed, the social collapse at the end of The Power is so far in the past that the male-dominated world is believed to be a myth. They literally don't believe in it, to the point where the female editor regards the male writer with amused condensation.

I don’t know how likely that actually is to happen. Our society took the shape it did for many reasons, not just male physical strength. But if you smash human society into fragments, what takes its place might be very different.

One of the odder aspects lies in the legal response to the Power. One (American) politician insists that women with the Power are effectively comparable to people walking around with loaded guns. He wants them banned from government offices. Alderman clearly wants us to draw a comparison between the Power and male strength, but there is a legal response to physical assault. A man who attacks his co-worker - male or female - will be arrested, tried and imprisoned. Why would this be different when a woman attacks her co-worker with the Power? On the other hand, Alderman could have been pointing out the fallacy of the ‘I couldn't control myself’ argument.

Another odder point lies in politics. Margot did very well when it came to handling the early problems caused by the Day of the Girls. She certainly had an excellent opportunity to parley her success into greater political power. Men - and women too, I think - admire movers, shakers and ... achievers. (Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel, love them or hate them, were definitely achievers; Hillary Clinton conspicuously was not.) Margot made a series of correct calls and her political career benefited. On the other hand, she semi-accidentally attacked her opponent during a political debate and won anyway. Even she wonders at her victory after that. I am unaware of any American politician in recent history who did anything of the sort and got away with it.

And, in the end, I couldn't help wondering if Alderman was commenting on identity politics too.

Most historical societies operated on the rule of force - the strong issued the orders and the weak did as they were told or got thumped. The ideal of the West is something different - the rule of law. Our society is based on the legal principle that all are equal before the law, regardless of every little detail. This is true equality. Feminists - and everyone representing a marginalized group - should be very careful not to imperil this. This is the bedrock of our society.

Identity politics are gnawing away at our vitals. If the group identity of a criminal is more important than the personal identity, we lose. If one group is seen to have power and privileges that other groups lack, those groups will demand it for themselves and/or turn against the whole concept. The recent attempt to brand people who didn't make eye contact as racist, for example, was so stupid that people could be forgiven for ignoring all suggestions of racism forever. They might not be right, but they would have a point. This, perhaps, is the true problem facing modern-day feminism. It’s in danger of losing sight of what is truly important.

Alderman, in an interview, proposes that every girl be given self-defense training. It is actually a very good suggestion, one that feminists should adopt. When seconds count, help is minutes away. It’s certainly a more practical suggestion than many others I’ve seen from Social Justice Warriors. The men who pay attention when they’re told not to rape aren't the ones who need the lessons. What are you going to do about them? Or about women who make fake accusations of rape, casting doubt on genuine reports?

Several other reviewers have commented on other aspects of the book. It largely ignores race and makes little mention of transgenders. (Of course, a crueler society might mock the transgendered rather than taking them seriously. Argus Fitch can self-identify as a wizard, if he wishes, but he’ll be lucky if he only gets laughed at.) Truthfully, The Power covers so much ground - in a relatively small book - that I don’t blame Alderman for not touching on everything.

Overall, The Power is a thought-provoking book ... although there is plenty of room to disagree with some of the answers! I don’t generally like the present tense format Alderman used, but she made it work. The letters framing the story are amusing, yet bitterly ironic. On the other hand, a cynic might argue that the true moral of the book - and of a society ruled by force - is that the world is always divided into ‘victims’ and ‘victimizers’ and that it is better to be a ‘victimizer’ than a ‘victim.’

Personally, I consider that rather sad. And it is a demonstration of precisely why we need the rule of law.

90 Comments:

Another ridiculous feminine power fantasy not even competently clothed as a political drama? Pass. Seriously "The Power" is the best description the author could come up with? Whatever happened to effort?

That isn't turning it on its head. The feminist fantasy is that the positions are arbitrary, they can be switched, women will work as a group overcoming false consciousness and women can replace men. Giving women the power to channel electricity would not cause them to be able to switch positions with men.

OT: SJWs strike again. Devour one of their own. Though this lady insulted white people, and was fired by one of her own, she will never learn. This experience will only maker her hate whites more than ever.

Sam wrote:That isn't turning it on its head. The feminist fantasy is that the positions are arbitrary, they can be switched, women will work as a group overcoming false consciousness and women can replace men. Giving women the power to channel electricity would not cause them to be able to switch positions with men.

What does it mean here to say that women "replace" men though. From the review it just sounds like the more impulsive or power-hungry women use their new found power to bully and dominate others. In other (some) women turn out to be just as prone to those 'toxic masculine' vices as men.

Blue Manticore wrote:What does it mean here to say that women "replace" men though. From the review it just sounds like the more impulsive or power-hungry women use their new found power to bully and dominate others. In other (some) women turn out to be just as prone to those 'toxic masculine' vices as men.

"I found that annoying at first, then I was reminded that the whole thing is presented as a historical novel, written by a man in a matriarchal society. The outcome, as far as he is concerned, is preordained. Indeed, the social collapse at the end of The Power is so far in the past that the male-dominated world is believed to be a myth. They literally don't believe in it, to the point where the female editor regards the male writer with amused condensation."

SirHamster wrote:Blue Manticore wrote:What does it mean here to say that women "replace" men though. From the review it just sounds like the more impulsive or power-hungry women use their new found power to bully and dominate others. In other (some) women turn out to be just as prone to those 'toxic masculine' vices as men.

"I found that annoying at first, then I was reminded that the whole thing is presented as a historical novel, written by a man in a matriarchal society. The outcome, as far as he is concerned, is preordained. Indeed, the social collapse at the end of The Power is so far in the past that the male-dominated world is believed to be a myth. They literally don't believe in it, to the point where the female editor regards the male writer with amused condensation."

Presumably people no longer believe that men could have held such negative 'patriarchal' values as these values are now so deeply associated with women through their (mis)use of the "Power" (imagine the Dr Evil voice for that last bit)?

Seriously, all it takes is a Faraday Cage of any sort to prevent someone from being zapped.

And I totally agree with SirHamster. The women folk who couldn't keep it under control would be locked into cells and 'triggered' into shocking stuff to supply power.

Oh, and you could just ground them out. Give them metal soled shoes... Though of course authors can have any work around based on how they made up the Power working.

I find it particularly telling that the reviewer seems to be saying that the author has women attack people and not get in trouble for it. Classic lack of responsibility that comes from being able to bat your eyes at someone and get away with crap for too much of your life. I would guess that the author doesn't understand the concept of responsibility that comes with superior ability...

Mostly irrelevant, the real question is what amperage can they put out. Note that it is true that the effective deadly amperage for AC is lower, but it doesn't really change the ultimate nature of the question.

While I appreciate the in-depth, articulate review, this book sounds painfully stupid.

A silly feminine fantasy about having superpowers, nothing more.

Even if we buy the premise, the idea that this would be enough for women to dominate society is absurdly stupid. There would not only be any number of counters to this electricity, but would it even be more powerful than a woman carrying around a gun?

Nonsense.

@12

OT: SJWs strike again. Devour one of their own. Though this lady insulted white people, and was fired by one of her own, she will never learn. This experience will only maker her hate whites more than ever.

"Put on leave" is not the same as "fired".

However, I really don't care about what happens to Fake American June Chu, Yale dean. The idea that it will cause this Chinese woman to hate white people any more or less is also incorrect.

I'm guessing some of you don't hang out with or have many Asian friends.

Female Generator Mutilation.I was wondering about Trannys. Caitlyn and Chesea wouldn't be shocking.Green energy, no solar or windmills, just women standing there and charging... we could call them the light brigade.

Does the awakening other women apply to post-menopausal? Hormones or not?If they're pregnant, does using the power harm the baby or result in an abortion?Doesn't anyone find a way to neutralize their power (think X men mutants united).Don't taze me soro!

I sounds painfully dumb. It sure as hell doesn't sound as useful as a gun.

The only guy who tried to intimidate someone in modern times was Gore with Bush looming over him like Manbearpig. It looked stupid and petty.

So what if women can push men away? That doesn't make them men and if they are dangerous enough that they cannot go into government buildings they are dangerous enough that they can be treated as a lethal weapon. Watch how society deals with that.

See, the basic premise is that men behave like arses because superior strength.

So that, when women acquire some magical power of their own, they immediately begin to act like arses themselves. They "become" the men - where "man" is defined as "a badly behaved idiot with more personal power than the average."

It's a particularly stupid and prejudicial view of sexual politics.

That there is a grain of truth in it (*some* men do indeed behave like arses to anyone (male or female) they perceive as having less strength than themselves) is irrelevant.

Our culture, our society, our politics, are not the way they are solely as a consequence of men being (on average) stronger than women.

They just aren't.

And so flipping that power relationship would definitely change things, but those changes would absolutely bewilder someone with such a one-dimensional view on the current relationship.

Judging by this review, the book is just another counterfactual female-empowerment fantasy, and the reviewer isn't capable of seeing through it.

The functional consequences of putting potentially-lethal force under women's control are already known. That's what readily available firearms and a culture favorable to them means. See Appalachia, Texas, the Rockies. There are criticisms to be made of such people and social problems to be seen in such places but rapidly emerging inevitable matriarchies are not one of them.

Power in women's hands does not turn women into men - one need merely observe women in middle and upper management positions at work in corporate environments to be quite certain of this. It does not change human nature. It does not reverse the roles of the sexes, it does not change the male tendency toward exploratory and abstract thinking and the female tendency toward social status-jockeying, it does not instantly reverse thousands or millions of years of development and breeding. It MAY change aspects of them, over time, but that gets into evolutionary and natural selection territory. It could be an interesting question to explore. Among the possibilities that would need to be seriously dealt with, such a trait could be such a handicap in producing the next generation that it would disappear or become paired with a tendency to keep it secret.

Based on this review, the book completely fails to make the consequences it postulates remotely credible. I thank the reviewer for making it clear I shouldn't waste my money.

Of course, we're all looking at the issue like, ya know; MEN. A hypothetical problem has been presented to us and we have quickly gone about analyzing its weaknesses and then quickly and efficiently crafting solutions to the problem.

Which just goes to show that we just don't get it. It's not about the nail.

Looks like she wasn't fired, but placed on leave. Would have been fine if she was black, I expect, but Chinese? Not enough victim points. Doesn't really look like she insulted any officially-designated victim groups, though. It would be unusual for "white trash" to be enough by itself to get her fired.

Also, reading her Yelp reviews, and as someone who can be on the misanthropic side at times myself, there's some element of anti-White hatred and more of snobbishness with respect to class, but she mostly seems to come across as an unpleasant person who dislikes/ looks down on most people, has a very high opinion of herself, and is not very good at disguising either trait. If she's at all like that in person, that may well be part of her problem. Of course, she may have left hundreds of other Yelp reviews that were less vicious, too.

One of her complaints about the Japanese restaurant was that the employees were Chinese. Kek. Actually, the concern with authenticity and looking down on "white trash" comes across more as typically white leftist attitudes than Chinese-- should fit in fine at Yale.

I'm going to guess that the main problem may well have been that she's just a pain in the ass, so that some students who already disliked her came across a couple of the Yelp reviews, and said "Hey, isn't that Dean Chu? Sure looks like her in the pic. Maybe we can cause her some problems if we report her for this. Just say it's 'classist' or some sh!t." "Great idea! Let's check out her other reviews." If you can get a witch hunt gets going, it builds on itself.

Dijkstra used what I believe is the far more beautiful term "radical novelty" to describe this class of things in this monograph: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html This is one of the finest obscure pieces of philosophy of the 20th century. I particularly like how he correctly classifies the pill with the atom bomb. Few understood that, now perhaps more do.

Semi-OT: what's the best practical way to defend against a taser attack (by crazed ex-GF, JBTs, whatever)? Comfortable metal-impregnated cloth (suitable for making clothing) does work, but seems to be VERY competently restricted to LEO purchase. That is, it's as or even harder to legally acquire than is the Recon/Delta Force MCW/LRP rations (which I would love to get for hiking), only seeing it in occasional tiny piece lots on E-Bay or the like.

I wonder how clearly she thought out the power dynamics of the ME and other countries where women are second class citizens.

I mean what would you do if your dog gained inteligence and some sort of electrical shock power. If its first action was to revolt against its unfair treatment and attack or seek to over throw men and human governance. You'd kill the dog. People would form militia's to hunt and kill dogs and puppies. It would be a war.

Its largely ignored but theres a reason why men and I do mean the male of the species managed to become the apex lifeform on the planet despite being an hairless ape, without any natural defence or offence and being poorly suited to most natural environments.

Likewise theres more to a Patriarchal society than the fact its run by men. Flipping the leadership roles wont make women suddenly philosphers or builders. Where in all the history of the world is the female plato or Socrates or Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great or even Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese?There are no great historical women hidden away by a chauvinistic society unable to deal with strong capable women.

It occurred to me while reading the summary that she misses the point of male power. It's not our muscles or physical ability that give us power, it's our expendability. Every last one of us is expendable and we know it. The first thing every military order teaches it's men is to accept that realization. We succeed because we have to. If we do not succeed, we die and that is hammered home.

Not so for women. A woman can do just about everything wrong, and she will be taken care of regardless. Some idiot, somewhere, will dedicate his life to her for access to her reproductive abilities. There is always that one bastard who will sabotage the entire group if he thinks he can get some.

The West has dealt with womens power by supplication. If a woman bats her eyes and says "he raped me", the entire machinery will go into motion to destroy the man, true or false, with evidence or lack of, regardless of his station or achievements. We all know this. A woman can initiate a physical attack, and if the man retaliates, he can expect to be in a fight for his life against the other males. The word for that is privilege

And like any privileged group throughout history, they have become fat, lazy and stupid. With every obnoxious trait that smug people get.

On the other hand, the East has dealt with the same power by repression. If all women had the magical power to shoot lightning bolts out of their hands, I suspect that the men of the East would begin mandatory rapings of their women from day one. The West would probably look much as it does now, with the gamma males being more effeminate snarky and backstabbing, the few alphas would be bold and courageous to the point of parody, and of course, the women would insist on bringing in even more savage foreign males than they do now.

If women ever take over (they won't;* civilization will collapse first), it won't be through zap!'s. They'll draw on their actual strengths, which are found in their lady parts, their lying and manipulation, and their emotional shrewdness. They can get men to zap! people for them, thank you very much.

It sounds like a TL;DR review of the red-pill realization that human civilization would not exist if women were the dominant physical sex, or if as many men were as capricious, solipsistic, and emotionally-driven as many women are. Most men understand that indulging our own negative emotions is a good way to get injured or killed, but there's no shortage of women willing to publicly express their rage fantasies of punching, slapping, or otherwise assaulting anyone who so much as annoys them.

@62. Dyskord, if you believe in evolution on some of the larger scales, given sufficient time (I know, I know, the eternal cry of the evolutionist) and a sufficiently strongly shaping "Power", one could expect men to adopt many of what we consider to be female mental traits, including such things as weaknesses at mathematics and spatial perception, and focus on communication.

There might even be some room for that within degenerative divergence. I mean, what IS a gamma after all?

Broken, yes, for a time, but eventually things will sort themselves out even via what might seem at the time to be strange attractors. The question is how much worse everyone is off (due to paying out more of the finite line of degenerative divergence) when things reach equilibrium.

It is lack of power that confers power. We strive for what we do not have. In the striving we learn and acquire great treasures of skill and knowledge.

The enemies of my country have no end of wealth, arms, and men who would carry those arms against me. Yet in several successive wars, using a variety of strategies and tactics, they utterly failed to defeat me by force of arms.

Will plays a far greater role in power than physical strength. And Will can only be generated by struggle, and struggle can only exist where there is what to struggle for.

God's greatest kindness to a man is to deprive him of good. When a man is deprived of good, he turns to God, in that turning to God he develops an appreciation and bond that he could not develop if the good was simply handed to him.

@66Nah, evolution doesn't work that way. In this case the differences in behavior are due to sex hormones but men with low T are incels and women with high T are lesbians so it isn't reproductively stable.

OT: Vox, OP: "(The Handmaid’s Tale, although it has been years since I read it.)"

They've released the (Hulu?) film in Britain and the scenes are causing some unhappy stir - apparently the rape(s) are graphic (and so often); that people are responding negatively.

"Episode five of the show, which appeared on Hulu in the US on Wednesday, shows his character Commander Waterford, repeatedly raping concubine Offred, played by Elisabeth Moss - and has been met with criticism from viewers for being so graphic."

If this doesn't come with immunity to electricity there would be no women left on the planet as they crab basket each other to be the prettiest girl alive. But at least Zimbabwe has a chance of using electricity for light again.

Furthermore, younger women can awaken the power in older ones.

Every lesbian fiction ever

In India, women make shows of force against rape culture; in the Balkans, women trafficked and sold into slavery fight back

This would lead to more deaths of blacks & jews than the kkk was responsible for. The ME would likely just use oil money to hire white people to chain women to grounding rods.

Yale-dean-placed-leave-white-trash-Yelp-reviews

I had to look to see if she was honest and said white trash from families earning less than $20.000/yr have an average SAT 3 points away from the most successful blacks from families earning over $200,000 per year.

Turns out she is (((one))) of them.

Have you seen her picture its more like ((((((((((((((((one)))))))))))))))))) she could have a desert eagle in those rolls!!

The solution to this, maintenance of patriarchy-wise, is actually fairly simple. Man, A, while out of range, holds guns on Bint, B, while Man, C, puts a device around her neck that will blow her foolish head off if she uses her power. Multiply by several billion. End of problem.

a 'fierce' new power? what's that, when they wear haute couture and then take their clothes off?

so FIERCE!

seriously, how did something as uselessly ineffectual as a female clotheshorse appropriate the word fierce? i are baffled.

13. Blue Manticore May 18, 2017 7:52 PMFrom the review it just sounds like the more impulsive or power-hungry women use their new found power to bully and dominate others.

amusingly, women bully and dominate others now. women initiate physical violence against their domestic partners more often then men do. Stefan cited a study which claimed that birth mothers physically struck their toddler children something like a dozen times per day ... behavior which, if done to a pet, would get them charged with animal cruelty and the pet taken away.

so the speculated world is actually the one we have now, just worse.

16. Critically Bent May 18, 2017 8:03 PM Oh, and you could just ground them out. Give them metal soled shoes

you're expecting a female SJW authoress to have technical expertise.

i haven't seen a flying pig recently so i wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

she's speaking euphemistically, you want to figure out what she thinks she's saying ... if you want to waste that much energy on it.

i would say to apply 'The Power' as an analog for Feminism and the old male misogynist ( as opposed to the futuristic female misandrist ) society as a euphemism for Biblical Patriarchy.

see how that parses.

18. Mathias May 18, 2017 8:15 PMMostly irrelevant, the real question is what amperage can they put out.

halfly relevant, you still need to know the voltage potential as well.

kilovolts and no current gets you static discharges or St Elmo's fire.

Just how powerful is the Power? It seems kind of half-assed, or at least half-thought-out, because once the first offensive use, does anyone really believe the "patriarchy" of nations like Saudi Arabia or China or even India are just going to roll over?

It's far more likely that they, and even more progressive nations, would institute a savage patriarchy like modern women have never even imagined: lockdown, possibly even physical, for women reaching the age of the Power, severe penalties for its use, and "misogynistic" propaganda everywhere. It could easily reach of "exterminate with extreme prejudice" with any adult female who looks at someone crosswise.

Not, of course, having read the book, but as far as I can tell from the review, just a tad more powerful than the good old having a hat pin and knowing where to stick it.

"It seems kind of half-assed, or at least half-thought-out, because . . ."

. . . it's not about the hat pin. The author half-thought it out because she didn't care what The Power was - just that there was one. The Power isn't supposed to suspend your suspension of disbelief because you aren't expected to care about it either.

You're just supposed to sit down, shut up and listen. A woman is talking.

Not very, unless the authoress has decided to ignore the laws of physics (which she likely has). Animals that stun or kill prey with electric shocks either need to be in water or touching their intended victim. So anyone with "the power" would be vulnerable to a weapon that kills at a distance. That's what guns are for, although a bow and arrow or a spear would obviously work too. The reason I'm bringing them up is to emphasize that "The Power" is less effective than primitive weapons we've had for centuries, even millenia.

It seems kind of half-assed, or at least half-thought-out, because once the first offensive use, does anyone really believe the "patriarchy" of nations like Saudi Arabia or China or even India are just going to roll over?

No, they'd be cracked down on, and cracked down hard by armed militias if they tried to seize power.

It's far more likely that they, and even more progressive nations, would institute a savage patriarchy like modern women have never even imagined:

Agree there. Even Westernized first-world countries would get on board if a mysterious "Power" caused the social upheaval outlined in that book.

Food for thought. The Indian man mentioned in this article can survive 30 times the electricity an ordinary man can. So resistance to electric shock is probably something that can be bred for, or possibly genetically engineered.

The new issue of Private Eye (UK news/satirical magazine, neither left nor right leaning, widely available with a circulation of ~250k) has a piece about this book which might be of interest to those concerned with Puppy-adjacent issues: http://imgur.com/a/jg87N

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